Waiting is profane

Waiting is for the impatient

Pause. Breathe. Your soul is whispering that there is something here for you. That's why you're here, reading our newsletter, whether you take class or not.

Waiting for the light to turn green. Waiting at the doctor’s office. Waiting at the bus stop. Waiting for the text message, the email, the call. Waiting for the alarm to wake you in the morning, for the pot to boil, for the squash to finish working.

Waiting keeps us in the future, in our heads, our expectations, our fears, in our anticipations.

Pausing, though it may appear almost analogous externally, is characterized by a nuance: it keeps us suspended in the present moment, where Yoga asks us to be. Not in the future, not in the past, in the now.

Don't wait to do Yoga. It takes time to work. Building your practice when life feels “Ok-ish”, well, or even great renders your investment returned when it’s not. The energy is there for you to build your practice, and your practice will start to build you. When we are struggling, the struggle itself robs us of energy to try or invest in something new.

Ambiguity about the mind's role can be clarified by our own self reflection. Self reflection can reveal how sped up we have become, perhaps due to our nature, early childhood home environments, parental nature, perhaps due to the residue of challenging life experiences, perhaps due to our mental load and responsibilities coupled with only 24 hours in a day. For me, I wasn’t born sped up. I was slow, quiet, pensive, self-regulating. I developed what I now know as anxiety as a young child. Yoga is my saving grace and takes me down a multitude of notches daily. This takes deep discipline and appropriate, evolving effort over a long time - and I can sometimes reap the benefit of that effort when life brings me to a halt. I can pause, although my impetus is to wait.

Pausing instead of waiting is Yoga. Pausing is sacred. Pausing is medicine. Pausing is what we teach. The whole practice is a pause, each breath is accompanied by pauses. We pause from what we normally tangle up with that distracts us from who we are, how we feel and the clarity that helps us to choose our adventure, rather than having an adventure claim us.